Page - 22 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 3/2017

22 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 3 2o17 Birgit Abels | Musical Atmospheres and Sea-Nomadic Movement Among the Sama Dilaut Introduction Each year in April, the sleepy little town of Semporna on Borneo’s eastern coast transforms into something else: the Regatta Lepa festival is taking place. For three consecutive days, the town’s shoreline is lined with lepas, the traditional-style Sama Dilaut houseboats which give the festival its name. The Sama Dilaut, a community of boat-dwelling sea nomads, consider the lepas their traditional homes, built to be in motion constantly across the South China Sea, scouring the area for fish and other sea produce. Historically, there have been a number of boat-dwelling communities across insular Southeast Asia, and they continue to exist to this day. However, since roughly the mid-20th century, many of them have begun to adopt sedentary or semi- sedentary lifestyles, typically settling in elevated wooden stilt houses along the coasts of seaside towns. But for the Sama Dilaut and many other maritime communities, their primary cultural identification remains, regardless of their current type of dwelling, their eponym: the sea, laut. The Regatta Lepa attracts roughly 15,000 visitors, mostly Malaysians, annually. The pro- gram is similar every year, with the official program spreading over two days. The day before the event’s official opening ceremony, the lepa boats, each carrying a gong ensemble and usually dancers as well, pour into the moorage, one by one, to secure their spots. The next day, they will compete in the Regatta Lepa’s central event, the selection of the “most beautiful” lepa. Together with the lepa boats, a significant number of kumpit boats – larger, engine-driven boats that have increasingly taken the place of the lepa in contemporary Sama Dilaut life in the course of the 20th century – gather at the moorage the afternoon before the festival’s official starting day to participate in the celebration. For the duration of the festival, several gong ensembles play independently of one another on the boats, wrapping the small mooring area, its waters, and everyone within hearing range in a thick, dense cloud of sound. The constant motorboat noise and the sound of carnival barkers, kids playing around the pier, and people socializing all add to the emerging sonic complexity (see video 1). As the boats tied to the shore compete for the festival title of most beautiful lepa, for many Sama Dilaut, it is this complex sonic environment that makes the festival space distinctly Sama Dilaut. In ordinary life, by contrast, that same space is shared, however tension-ridden, by several communities – a co-existence with conside- rable compartmentalization, evident in many of the Sama Dilaut opting to occupy stilt houses along the shoreline and away from the festival site, rather than any concrete homes in town, where the various cultural groups mix more freely. “[The Regatta Lepa] is a celebration of the Sama Dilaut,” said one of the people I worked with, raising his voice so that I’d be able to hear him in the midst of the complex soundscape and bustle as we were walking past the shoreline during Regatta Lepa 2010. “It’s not in the details,” said another, musing about the colorful lepa lineup at the shore and the musical repertoires playing on their boats as we walked past the jetty. “I don’t know; it’s the whole thing, really. It just gets to you.” Video 1: Excerpt from Regatta Lepa XVI, Semporna, Sabah/Borneo (Malaysia), 18 April 2009. Recorded by Birgit Abels. https://vimeo.com/246125939